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Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

I don't care how close the score says it was, we beat the **** out of them, without Danny (who btw was shooting around before the game) and George suffering from the flu, and two of the three refs completely kissing Miami's ***. WE STILL beat the **** out of them. Thats ****ing impressive.

"Nobody wants to play against Tyler Hansbrough NO BODY!" ~ Frank Vogel

"And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. And it struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground. Amen. "
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Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

granted this seemed like a broken play...still impressive to watch PG handle the ball and play keep away, let alone drain the shot. Though his handles aren't where they need to be just yet, it's clear he's working on it and improving!

Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

Lance and Paul obviously have improved and we knew that long before tonight.

Roy did everything right except make gimmie shots at the rim. That's bad, but it's the theme for his season and it's hard to figure. Luckily he does so much else it offsets the shots, and the team doesn't really make him the offensive focus anymore anyway.

Orlando looked promising in that he didn't look intimidated to be facing Wade/James. He has a real shot to stick with the team as a solid bench player, adding to a nice list of 2nd round successes that includes Lance and AJ Price (AJ has a ton of minutes for where he was drafted).

With so much focus on Paul, or West's slump or Roy's shooting or Lance's improvement there is one item I think lurking and maybe (hopefully) on the verge of surprising people - Ian Mahinmi. His hands are a mess but you see his confidence and his game picking up from week to week. He drives the ball to the rim a couple of times every game in a way that is West-like impressive, and then he shows big man power and reach in at the rim for shot challenges or scoring attempts in heavy traffic. It's not quite there, it's not quite synched up just yet, but seriously...if this dude gets just 10% better around the edges he is going to be a major problem for other benches to deal with.

Compare his night vs Bosh where he had 18 min and Bosh played 36. 7 points on 7 FGA, 5 rebounds, 1 steal. Bosh had 14 points on 10 FGA, 5 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 steal. Double the minutes gets you double the points (on more FGA of course), the same rebounds and a couple of assists.

Ian's reb/36 is over 12 for the last 4 games and at 10 if you even include the Memphis game. He's been better in the last 5 than the 5 before that, all of which is an improvement over where he was earlier this year.

Tyler has started to click into a more classic "Hans" style of game, and if Ian is finding his footing too then the team has more positives showing up in FEB than just Danny's return.

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Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

Here's the thing, I tweeted it in the first half, but basically the only thing keeping the Heat close was some bizarrely efficient 3 point shooting and it was really the only reason they put any pressure on us in the 4th as well. We totally shut down their dribble drive game that they developed...dun dun dun....against us last year...that is called growth folks by the coach and players.

We were missing open 3s in the first half and they were hitting them, that evened out in the third and it was curtains for them after that.

Our defense is basketball porn. It's not even boring defense, it is exciting, trapping, physical defense being played by a bunch of confident strong guys. We are really a punishing team to play against.

Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

I don't care how close the score says it was, we beat the **** out of them, without Danny (who btw was shooting around before the game) and George suffering from the flu, and two of the three refs completely kissing Miami's ***. WE STILL beat the **** out of them. Thats ****ing impressive.

Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

R-E-G-G-I-E in the HOUSE!!!!! typically i would fear we lose the next game after a big win like this.. but with ....

#31

in the building. WE WILL WIN.

P GEORGE... anyone else feel like the TORCH is being handed to #24 vs Knicks next game.?

I can't imagine anything finer!

Great win against the Heatles. To be the best you have to beat the best and the Pacers clamped down on the Heat like a vise. Their defense this year has been remarkable. Teams dont even want to attempt shots in the lane when Hibbert is on the floor and now Lance and even Gerald are starting to play good smart team and individual defense.

However, now that this game is over, I really want them to focus on beating the Knicks who have been struggling but Carmelo in some ways is harder to guard because he's so tall and is such a good shooter from behind the arch. He'll be a tough guy for David West to try and cover on the perimeter.

I'm looking forward to hearing what Reggie has to say especially since there is so much history between he the Pacers and the Knicks organizations.

Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

I didn't even say Hibbert had a bad game fellas, I just said watching him miss so many shots and layups at this point has grown to the level of sadness. Not even mad at him anymore, I just feel bad for him.

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Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

I agree Joe, and the wing 3 was there all night (tweeted that) if only Hill had been healthy enough to hit them. On twitter my view had been that Miami showed very high intensity defense to start the game and that their effort to push like it was a playoff game was going to wear them down and take away their 3 offense by the mid 3rd. So as the game wore on you saw Miami's 3 ball come back to earth and saw the Heat pay for giving Indy too many 3s. For every deep or tough 3 the Pacers hit they left a wide open shot on the board, so it wasn't like Indy was getting lucky.

Also note that Miami DID NOT SHOOT A SINGLE FTA in the 3rd quarter. Not even an And-1, nothing. 6 2pt makes and 1 3pt make for 15 points.

Pacers defended well without excessive fouling, and they withstood some generous whistle choking by the refs when it came to Miami's own very physical play early on.

The Pacers have taken the loss of Danny, Roy's poor shooting and the road heavy schedule and they have survived it. Now they look tougher for it, just days removed from a bad Boston loss which looks more like the anomaly than the rule.

And as for the Pacers defense, you know my gambling rule with their games - ALWAYS BET THE UNDER. Yet another team held under 80.

Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

I didn't even say Hibbert had a bad game fellas, I just said watching him miss so many shots and layups at this point has grown to the level of sadness. Not even mad at him anymore, I just feel bad for him.

ive been as critical as anyone with 55. maybe not on here but overall. tonight i started watchign the game and early on there were 2 occassions where i felt Hibbs was lazy or lacked effort on the play. in fact it was the 2 buckets the heat got to pull it to 10-9.

then i realized the impact Hibberthas on the game. like "realized" as in Hibbert postseason 2012. without him in the lineup how good do you think our D would be.?? honestly.

he is a poor mans D12 prime. im not worried about his offfense... tho im very aware of the strugges he has. i wish at times he woudl take a "power dribble." he is clumsy on offense or awkward if you will. but Defensively he is a game changer.

in the playoffs when its a half court game Hibbert will be a force. im sure i will be critical of double nickel again very soon.. but im confident Hibbert is going to conitnue to improve.

Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

I didn't even say Hibbert had a bad game fellas, I just said watching him miss so many shots and layups at this point has grown to the level of sadness. Not even mad at him anymore, I just feel bad for him.

I think the thing that gets me is that just about every interaction I've had with you has been concerning Hibbert. On top of that below your name it reads "Trade Hibbert." It's not like he's missing wide open layups, he's missing tips where he's holding off a guy or two who weighs 240+ pounds while reaching up with one arm and tapping it toward the basket. If that was all he was doing for us I would understand. But we base our entire defense off of him and Mahinmi.

He's anchoring a top 2 defense in the league. We just held a top 5 offensive team to 77 points, their lowest of the year. On side PnR or isolations, we stick our guy on an island and tell them to guard the middle of the floor. Against any other team in the league, LeWade goes ham and combines for 70 points with that kind of freedom. But they didn't score with all the open space they were given because if they move over there they're now trying to shoot over a minimum 6'11" player or drive around him with limited space. I'm frustrated with his low FG% as well, but when I look at what he does to our second chance opportunities and defense I don't really care.

The fact is, they never really tried driving on us. Their offense became the Orlando Magic sans Dwight Howard. They were basically doing nothing but shooting long midrange jumpers and 3 pointers. The only reason the game wasn't a blowout was because Wade hit a third of his season's quota of 3 pointers with a trip to the ft line from the 3pt line to boot.

Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

Noticed that in the 3rd too Seth. Respect from the officials. The Pacers have quietly, slowly plowed open a rep around the NBA, we play hard, physical defense, but we do it in a clean manner and we are earning the respect from the officials. It is too the point where I am surprised where toss up call under the hoop on D goes against us.

Again, it all comes back to Paul, Lebron may cover the most space as a defender in a fast break situation in the NBA, but it's tough to think of anyone else int he NBA who is doing what Paul is capable of in a half court setting. He's recovering on D, he's switching faster than he ever has in his career, and his defense both against picks and screens is much better than what it was in the playoffs last year. Lebron and Wade were trying to screen Paul off them all night and I only really remembering it working once or twice. He is getting downright scary on the perimeter. And it's not all highlight stuff, it is amazing fundamental, I am just this good at defense stuff. It is stuff that you don't even notice until you go back and watch a play once or twice. Anyone notice how oftern Paul was forcing Lebron to his left? Pretty much the entire night. Look you can't stop Lebron, but as a really good defender what you have to do is shut him down as much as possible, make him as uncomfortable as you can, it's the little things, make him go to his left, make him pull up fading to the side instead of fading away.

Also, Lance taking Wade's cookies at half court was ****ing awesome.

And this was on a night when the guy who usually gets our whole defensive engine started was clearly under the weather. G. Hill is not an elite 1 on 1 defender, but he is absolutely brilliant at forcing a team's offense to start in a spot where they don't want it to start. He couldn't do that tonight and even then it was just like Lance, Paul, West, Roy, and even G. Green who had some solid defensive plays just said "alright boys, we gotta sack up and get Hill's back tonight. We're going to be starting from a little bit of a negative area, just force them away from their spots once they get it."

Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

As long as Hibbert continues to anchor this defense, him shooting 30% from the field doesn't bother me. He still demands the defenses attention because no matter how much a 7 footer is struggling if hes open hes going to hit a shot that close to the goal.

So he is still drawing defenses in

And when Granger comes back we will need his scoring even less. Once Granger comes back, I would put Hibbert as our 5th option on offense. I don't care if hes struggling as long as defenses have to at least respect his height.

EDIT

BTW its so great to finally see our bench players playing like we hoped in the offseason. If Augustin, Lance, Green, Psycho T and Mahinmi can keep this up we are going to be really dangerous.

It's really the only way a team without a superstar can be successful long term. No matter how many offensive studs you have, if you don't have that defense you're just not going to outscore a team with 2 superstars. But just how big and athletic our team is as a whole is unreal.

I mean...Lance Stephenson at 6'5 and 240 pounds is our SMALL wing player. Are you kidding me?

Re: Pacers/Heat Postgame Thread 1/8/13

And as for the Pacers defense, you know my gambling rule with their games - ALWAYS BET THE UNDER. Yet another team held under 80.

I was talking to some friends earlier and they told me that they bet the Over for this game. I was actually surprised and dumbfounded. People should know by now that we will score the Under 9 times out of 10.

Tonight, all flags must burn, in place of steeples.
Autonomy must return into the hands of the people.